music, art, poetry, movies, bibles, theology, coffee, beer, cigars

Mosaic? Or Mo’Psycho?

Mosaic, an L.A. based church… uh, I mean community is the center of the emergent movement in the southland. As with most emergent churches they try and stay away from calling themselves a church, they want to be seen as a community, inclusive to all.

Several months ago I was speaking with a friend from church. We were both looking for a new place to worship and not long after he began to attend services at Mosaic. I had never heard of it before, but was leery of it from the name alone. I checked out their site but couldn’t really find anything concrete, either good or bad. They are not a confessional church, that is they do not hold to any of the early church confessions like the Westminster Confession of Faith or the London Baptist Confession of 1689.

I listened to a few of the sermons(?) by Erwin McManus, whom doesn’t claim to be the pastor but cultural architect of Mosaic. He is an engaging speaker but has nothing biblical to say. He has nice catch phrases but he is devoid of any real, scriptural teaching. He can expertly take verses out of context and eisegete them masterfully. He will read from the Bible, but then proceeds to tell you a story that does nothing to illuminate the passages he read. If you feel up to it, listen for yourself. Or read this, it gets more disturbing the more you know about it.